Making real decisions in International meetings

Do you ever take part in international meetings where people say “yes” when they mean “no”? Where some people come prepared to reach decisions and others expect only to discuss? Where you thought you made a decision but nothing happened after the meeting?

This can be particularly frustrating when international meetings are infrequent and very expensive to organize and run. Failure to make “real” decisions can introduce significant delays and costs in international projects and teams.

There are major differences in how different cultures expect to run meetings and make decisions.

• In individualist cultures like the US and UK, we expect meetings to be for discussion and for making decisions. As a result, we see meetings as a key management tool (and rely on them too much as a way to get things done).

• In many Latin cultures, it may be more effective to have informal discussions over coffee with the key decision makers. Formal meetings may only be held to communicate decisions that have already been made.

• In many Asian cultures, like Japan, the real decision making unit is the work group rather than the individual at the meeting. Meetings are useful to find out other points of view and to share information. The individuals attending the meeting then expect to take this information back for further discussion in the group – which is the real decision making unit.

To clarify your meeting, for each agenda item you should discus and set clear expectations about

1. What is the outcome you expect from this item? A discussion, a decision, to share information etc...
2. What is the process you plan to follow to reach this outcome? If you want a decisions will you vote, achieve consensus or will the senior person decide.

You should also challenge whether the meeting is the right tool to achieve this. If the group your are talking to really needs to build collective consensus then forcing an individual to make a decision in a meeting may not produce a real decision.

You may achieve a better result by lobbying and sharing information in advance and only calling a meeting once people have had a chance to discuss and update the group view.

If you present new information in the meeting, be prepared for collective cultures to need to go through the discussion process again to update the group view.

If this does not work it may be that the person you are inviting to the meeting is not senior or influential enough to deliver the consensus you need.

Different cultures also have different expectations about participation, preparation, communication, action planning and meeting etiquette. Failing to understand these differences can lead to frustration and delay.

For more information on how to improve your cross-cultural meeting, please see our guide “Better cross cultural Meetings” at our new online shop.

http://www.global-integration.com/shop/booklets/index.html

For less than the cost of the taxi from the airport to most international meetings, this guide contains a diagnostic questionnaire for evaluating your meeting and a series of tips and tools for improving the way the meeting runs. It contains information for 10 major cultures on how people typically behave in meetings and what they expect from them.

Please pass this on

Please circulate this to anyone in your network that you think would find it useful. They can get their own subscription and free copy of our “Remote & Virtual Teams” booklet from http://www.global-integration.com/contact/free_tips.html